I am a senior fellow at The Brookings Institution in Washington, DC where I specialize in counterinsurgency, counterterrorism, stabilization, illicit economies, organized crime and urban violence. One of the areas I focus on is Somalia where I travel regularly.

My testimony below represents my personal views only and does not reflect the views of Brookings, its other scholars, employees, officers, and/or trustees. As an independent think tank, The Brookings Institution does not take institutional positions on any issue.

My latest fieldwork in Somalia in December 2017 was part of a UN University (UNU) project on amnesty, leniency, and defectors’ programs in Somalia, Nigeria, and Iraq, The Limits of Punishment: Transitional Justice and Violent Extremism (UNU, June 2018), funded by United Kingdom’s Department for International Development (DFID). Sections of my statement for the record draw on my chapter in that volume — “The Hard, Hot, Dusty Road to Accountability, Reconciliation, and Peace in Somalia: Amnesties, Defectors programs, Traditional Justice, Informal Reconciliation Mechanisms, and Punitive Responses to al-Shabab”. My written statement for the record does not represent the views of UNU or DFID; it reflects my personal views only.

Summary

Since 1991, Somalia has been battered by undulating phases of a civil war playing out among the country’s many fractious clans, larger entities aspiring to statehood, warlords, and Islamist groups. State institutions, including the security apparatus, have experienced a profound collapse. Despite extensive international efforts for three decades to rebuild state institutions and stabilize the country, Mogadishu-based national governments have had limited operational capacity and physical reach into much of the country. Critically, they have been debilitated by parochial political competition among the country’s clans and powerbrokers. Thus, the official state has been mostly unable to deliver even a modicum of governance to local populations while battling strong and agile military opponents and separatism. Characteristically, the most effective, even if brutal, stabilizing actors in Somalia have been Islamist groups. More than other contestants for power, they have been able to rise above clan divisions and administer a uniform rule, protect marginalized minority clans, and deliver swift, predictable, and non-corrupt justice.

Yet because of their connections to global jihadist movements, including active participation in vicious terrorism abroad and in Somalia, and significant human rights abuses, rule by the country’s jihadi groups has been unacceptable to the international community as well as resented by Somalis. Nonetheless, when international or Somali military efforts have liberated territories, clan infighting and discrimination have often broken out, and the state has often failed with adequate and equitable governance.

Experiencing multiple iterations of jihadi groups able to control large territories amidst state collapse, the government of Somalia is currently battling the Harakat al-Shabab al-Mujahideen, commonly referred to as al Shabab, and its splinter faction, the Islamic State. At its peak, between 2009 and 2011, al Shabab controlled most of southern Somalia, including Mogadishu. Since 2012, an international military intervention by the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM), composed of forces from Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, Burundi, and Djibouti,

in combination with Somali clan militias and the vestiges of Somali national forces (SNF) supported by the larger international community, has succeeded in wrestling control of large parts of Somalia from al Shabab. But since 2015, military efforts against al Shabab have stalled, the capacity of Somali national forces remains minimal, and AMISOM is reducing its presence. Meanwhile, al Shabab, because of its delivery of pan-clan governance, remains deeply entrenched and undefeated. So the prospect is for conflict to intensify and insecurity to worsen.

International efforts to improve the capacity of the Somali government have registered some important progress: Somalia successfully, albeit quite imperfectly, conducted two presidential and parliamentary elections. Crucially, it has embarked on a major political and institutional overhaul, including the writing of a new constitution and formation of federal states.

Yet significant tensions and disagreements between the federal government and federal states persist. In 2018, this had produced an intense months-long crisis. Meanwhile, corruption and clientelism run rampant and affect every sector and level of government, business, and society.

Also the political crisis among members of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) has significantly negatively affected Somalia, with external actors exacerbating tensions between the government of Somalia and opposition politicians and between the federal government, particularly President Mohamed Abdullahi “Farmajo” Mohamed and federal states.

The Military Battlefield

Al Shabab still controls tracts of rural central, southern, and western Somalia, including in the regions of Lower and Middle Juba, Lower and Middle Shabelle, Hiraan, Gedo, Bay and Bakool, Mudug, Galguduud, and Puntland, as well as major roads throughout the country. It regularly takes over major towns, particularly as some AMISOM forces, such as from Ethiopia, have started to withdraw. AMISOM has been plagued by intelligence, logistical, and mandate deficiencies and rivalries among contributing members. It lacks offensive capabilities, rapid strike forces, adequate airlift and mobility assets, and force enablers and supporters. Funding uncertainty also continues to plague the mission. In January 2016 the uncertainty and AMISOM dissatisfaction with payments worsened when, for multiple reasons, the European Union (EU), the sole entity paying the salaries of AMISOM soldiers, decreased its stipend contribution by 20 percent (from US$1,028 per soldier per month to US$822).1 As of September 2018, the EU was yet to define its funding commitment to AMISOM beyond 2018.

AMISOM forces have been mostly in a static garrison lockdown since 2015, having exhausted their offensive and counterinsurgency capacities, at the cost of significant loss of life for some of the member countries. To the extent that new offensive operations against al Shabab are mounted by ground forces, they are mostly conducted by clan militias and local warlords and their forces, sometimes along with local or state police forces known as darawish (often mostly more institutionalized militias).

Neither AMISOM nor the Somalia National Army (SNA) have developed adequate military holding capacity after clearing operations. Because of lack of local language capacities, overstretch, and its weak force-protection posture, it rarely engages proactively with local populations in areas of its garrisons. As a result, the crucial holding function once again is left to clan and warlord militias. AMISOM, like the SNA, explicitly rely on and use clan militias, though these actors subscribe to no international standards of conduct, face no accountability for their human rights violations, and often use child soldiers.2 Unable to receive formal international salary assistance, beyond clandestine income from foreign intelligence services operating in Somalia, these militias engage in extensive extortion and predation of local communities, discrimination against rival clans, and the theft of their resources, such as land or water, as well as rapes. Although the total number of militiamen may be in the tens of thousands, there is currently no demobilization program for the militias. However, local communities complain equally of extortion, predation, and land and resources theft by various factions of the SNA and Somali National Police (SNP). Like Somalia’s intelligence services, the SNA and SNP are extensively infiltrated by al Shabab operatives.

In May 2017, the government of Somalia, with backing from international partners and buy-in from Somalia’s federal states, presented a national security pact defining Somalia’s national security architecture. Under the Security Pact,3 which envisions Somalia’s security apparatus to be “able, accountable, affordable, and acceptable”4 to Somali society, federal states were to integrate their regional forces into the SNA. At least some of the militias were also to be integrated into state and national police forces. However, as the planned size of the SNA is to be 18,000 and the size of future federal and state police capped at 32,000, there will not be enough space in the formal security sector for many existing state, clan, and warlord militia members. Many other challenges regarding the force structure persist. Moreover, given the crisis in relations between the federal government and federal states that has persisted throughout most of 2018, the federal states’ commitment to such integration of forces appears to have dissipated.

Meanwhile, the Somali national forces remain notoriously undertrained and under-equipped as well as corrupt. The SNA consists mostly of ineffective battalions that are unable to pair up with AMISOM even for joint holding operations, let alone offensive actions against al Shabab. Despite extensive allocation of resources to training, the SNA itself remains a hodgepodge of local clan forces and militias and are riddled by clan and patronage cleavages, resulting in various units fighting each other, such as over control of checkpoints that can be exploited for illegal rent extraction. Nominally, the Somali Ministry of Defense has some 29,000 on its payroll, but of that number only 12,000 may actually be fighters, with the rest widows and the elderly.5 Debilitatingly, money for police officers and soldier salaries, paid for by the international community, are often stolen in Mogadishu, thus undermining the morale and cohesion of the government’s forces.6 The Operational Readiness Assessment that the Somali government undertook of the SNA in late 2017 revealed deficiencies across the board of the entire military, from command and control, to cohesion, training, equipment, logistics and enabler support, morale, corruption, and factionalism. It remains to be seen whether the federal government will be able to undertake the necessary reforms.

In 2018, AMISOM began the transition process for greater reliance on Somali forces, slightly reducing its presence in Somalia, following the informal withdrawal of Ethiopian forces in 2017. But in July 2018, recognizing the woeful lack of readiness of the Somali security forces and the entrenchment of al Shabab, the United Nations Security Council extended AMISOM’s mandate. Instead of AMISOM’s mission ending in 2020 as previously planned, Somali security forces are to remain in the lead of Somalia’s security.7 AMISOM — whose country contingents are to various degrees embedded in numerous legal and illegal forms of Somalia’s political economy, such as charcoal, fuel, and sugar trading and smuggling,8 has engaged in only limited transition planning with the international community and the Somali government. The unannounced withdrawals of several Ethiopian military contingents in Somalia had left behind significant power vacuums, rapidly filled by al Shabab and significantly worsening the security of local civilian populations. Al Shabab has thus been able to expand its territorial reach and regain some previously lost territory. In early 2018, some elements of a transition plan were agreed to, but execution has lagged substantially behind.9

The prospect currently is for large gaps between AMISOM’s drawdowns and eventual withdrawal and the readiness of the Somali forces. The SNA remains unprepared to fill even the existing security role of AMISOM.

Al Shabab’s current strength is estimated to be between 2,000 and 3,000 active combatants. In 2017, al Shabab engaged in intensified recruitment among Somalia’s many unemployed young men and resorted to significantly increasing forcible abductions of children.10 And while the tempo and number of security incidents during 2017 fluctuated and in the latter part of the year went down, the severity of attacks — from bloody terrorist incidents in Mogadishu to takeover of towns as close to Mogadishu as thirty kilometers — increased. Al Shabab has also resorted to charging more frequent and more pervasive zakat fees on any economic activity.11

Although al Shabab is strongest in the lower parts of Somalia, such as the lower Juba and lower Shabelle areas, it is not geographically confined. It also retains operational military capacity in the northern federal states of Puntland and Somaliland; and south of Puntland some form of its presence is widespread, such as in the imposition and collection of taxes. In addition to systematically collecting taxes in Mogadishu and throughout the country, al Shabab regularly conducts bomb attacks and assassinations in Mogadishu, as well as major terrorist attacks in Kenya (previously also in Uganda). Even major towns firmly held by anti-Shabab forces, such as Kismayo, where Ahmed Madobe’s militias and the Kenyan Defense Forces rule, can be surrounded by territories held by al Shabab.

Anti-Shabab actors, including AMISOM and the Somali national forces, thus rely on U.S. air strikes to limit al Shabab’s often-successful attacks against their installations. The presence of U.S. soldiers in Somalia increased significantly in 2017, doubling to more than 500. However, as such attacks on al Shabab significantly increased in the latter part of 2017, and allegedly caused civilian casualties and exacerbated clan grievances, al Shabab was able to exploit such claims. Moreover, the U.S. air campaign has suffered the same limitations as AMISOM offensives: in the absence of holding forces, the airstrikes merely disperse al Shabab to other areas, including to Mogadishu, even as the U.S. tries to hit al Shabab vehicles to prevent their movement. Beyond air support, U.S. Special Operations Forces also operate on the ground, targeting al Shabab and the Islamic State and advising and assisting Somalia’s elite commando units in counterterrorism operations. But even such operations against high-value targets are constrained in their ultimate effectiveness without enhanced security capacities of the Somali forces and improved governance.

Moreover, al Shabab is not the only militant actor in Somalia. More than 60 warring parties are present in in the country, from clan and warlord militias to various other militant groups, such as the Sufi al Sunna or the Islamic State.12 A splinter group of al Shabab, the Islamic State has been based mostly in Puntland, a major entry-point for various illicit and smuggling networks and a former hub of Somali pirates. Lately, the Islamic State appears to have expanded its operations also to Mogadishu. Nonetheless, in comparison to al Shabab, it remains a much weaker militant group.13

Non-Military Approaches: Defectors’ Programs

The government of Somalia and the international community have principally relied on militarily defeating al Shabab; and there is no immediate prospect for Somali government negotiations with al Shabab. However, aware of the limits of the military counterinsurgency efforts, the Somali government has completed the military efforts with declarations of amnesties for jihadi militants, ad hoc political deals with splinter groups, and disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration (DDR)-like programs for defectors and populations living under militant rule. Their purpose is to weaken al Shabab on the battlefield. Somali government officials and implementing international partners report that al Shabab defectors numbering in the low thousands have gone through such programs.14

The government has not yet undertaken any similar DDR-like efforts toward the myriad of clan and warlord militias that exit in Somalia. Efforts at reintegration of former combatants from al Shabab and beyond, and at clan and community reconciliation, have also taken place through non-governmental programs and traditional justice mechanisms.

Two sets of Somali government-led non-punitive processes have been under way: 1) ad hoc political deals with so-called high-value defectors who receive protection and red-carpet treatment from the Somali government and face no accountability or scrutiny for their past behavior; and 2) DDR-like rehabilitation programs for al Shabab defectors who are assessed by Somali intelligence officials to pose a low risk of returning to violent terrorism and proselytizing or providing logistical support for al Shabab. The defectors’ program consists of five phases: outreach, reception, screening, rehabilitation, and reintegration. The rehabilitation component of the low-risk defector program is administered at three facilities –the Serendi center in Mogadishu, a center in Baidoa, and a center in Kismayo – by two international implementing partners.

Those defectors who are assessed as high-risk as well as high-risk detainees are sent to military courts widely perceived not to adhere to international human rights standards. The courts mostly sentence those convicted to the death penalty. The international community has worked hard to persuade a reluctant government of Somalia to try high-risk defectors and detainees in civilian courts, and to that effect has built a special civilian court in Mogadishu.

Little transparency exists as to how defectors are received by either African Union forces or Somali authorities. The screening process is equally non-transparent and raises a high possibility that populations who lived under al Shabab rule and were forced to work for al Shabab even in ordinary tasks, such as cooking and washing, are caught up in the screening process, and at best judged as low-risk defectors. Despite the development of draft standard operating procedures for screening to reduce the arbitrariness of high-risk and low-risk judgements, a substantial risk persists of arbitrariness as to who is assessed as high risk and thus likely to be sentenced to death.

The government-led effort that has received the most support from the international community, the program for low-risk defectors, has registered the greatest improvements and progress in its operations, such as in separating children from exploitative adults and improving exit procedures. Prior to 2015, the exit procedures were opaque and arbitrary, defectors often languished in the facilities for years, and the facilities at times overlapped with detention. But major challenges persist. These include: the controversial role and presence of Somali intelligence services at the rehabilitation facilities; little harmonization across the centers; the lack of any rehabilitation facilities for female defectors, detainees, and women who lived under al Shabab rule; the underdevelopment of reinsertion and rehabilitation programming for receiving communities and the communities’ reconciliation with former al Shabab associates and among rival and subordinate and dominant clans; and the lack of job opportunities for former al Shabab combatants and associates who, amidst overall high unemployment, frequently join the Somali military or intelligence services or militias.

Other large problems loom over these programs: the lack of a legal framework; high corruption and lack of adherence to international human rights laws by Somali government institutions; the lack of a parallel effort to disarm and transform clan and warlord militias; high persisting clan conflict and discrimination; and the country’s prevalent politics of exclusion and marginalization.

Crucially, difficulties balancing leniency, forgiveness, and battlefield pragmatism on the one hand with accountability, justice, and victims’ rights on the other hand, and hence societal acceptance of or disquiet with such measures affects all three sets of processes for high-value defectors, high-risk defectors and detainees, and low-risk defectors. Resentments are created by perceptions that high-value al Shabab defectors receive a red-carpet treatment from the Somali government and complete impunity and low-level defectors receive support such as literacy, numeracy, and vocational training, in addition to religious deradicalization, while the receiving communities continue to exist in poverty and without any government services.

There is also a deep belief among many Somali civil society representatives that the root cause of Somalia’s multifaceted problems is the profound and pervasive impunity of the powerful, and the fear that non-punitive approaches, such as the high-value and even the low-risk defectors’ programs, only augment this sense of impunity. Women representatives in particular voice such views.

Emblematic of such complexities and sensitivities is the case of Mukhtar Robow, a former spokesman of al Shabab and the group’s deputy leader. Although long on a U.S. capture-or-kill list and widely accused of severe human rights violations, Robow struck a deal with the Government of Somalia in August 2017, and since has been conducting a prominent political life in Mogadishu and the South West State of Somalia. In addition to receiving armed protection from the Somali government, he was able to keep his personal militia, whose members, like him, have not been subject to any judicial or amnesty process or other accountability or truth-telling measures. Such total impunity and complete disregard for victims’ rights have deeply angered Somalia’s civil society.

The government of Somalia expected that Robow would either fight al Shabab or use his importance in the Rahaweyn clan to persuade other Rahaweyn fighters of al Shabab to disarm. Such expectations have not materialized, however. Instead, Robow has engaged in an intense political power struggle in the South West State, dominated by the Rahaweyn clan. Despite opposition from the federal government, Robow has been campaigning for the presidency of the South West State in elections to be held in November 2018. The federal government sought to bar him from running, citing extant international sanctions against him. But the chairman of the elections committee of the South West State cleared him to participate. In the absence of a formalized and approved constitution, it is disputed whether the federal government or the federal state is the proper authority to decide who can run in federal elections. Along with the rest of the elections committee members, the chairman has since resigned, but Robow continues to campaign, defying control of the federal government and successfully manipulating local politics.

Clearly, non-punitive approaches to former low-risk al Shabab combatants, clans aligned with al Shabab because of prior discrimination, and populations who lived under al Shabab rule are needed. They can prevent new injustice to those who had to endure al Shabab rule, and they can reduce violence, and facilitate achieving a deep peace which avoids endless cycles of violence and discrimination and counter-revenge. However, emphasizing accountability in creative ways beyond imprisonment, as tending to well as victims’ rights and reparations are equally essential for a lasting peace.

Governance and Politics

The political context in Somalia remains as fraught and fractured as the military battlefield. Although sub-federal state formation has been under way in Somalia since 2015 — a most positive development — the process is tense with inter-state and state-federal government rivalries over territories, control of armed forces, resource-sharing, and power-delegation.

Clan discriminations and rivalries continue to prevail and debilitate governance, producing hung governments unable to produce laws and policy at the federal level and incessant political infighting and discrimination against minorities also at the federal level.15 The legal formalization of the 2012 provisional constitution as well as of some of Somalia’s existing six states are yet to take place. Recent efforts to create pan-clan political parties as a result of new electoral legislation, attempts change the rules of impeachment to limit this frequent tool of political and financial extortion, and mechanisms to strengthen the capacity of the federal government to provide revenues to federal entities are beacons of hope that the political and clan infighting can diminish in the future.

In the meantime, however, Somalia is often considered to be the poorest, least developed, and most collapsed and corrupt country in the world, and critically dependent on foreign aid. Building of state institutions, or extending any form of federal state or national state presence, remains a distant prospect in many parts of the country beyond regional capitals or major economic hubs. Formal taxing capacity remains constrained, with many business community members questioning why they should pay taxes when they receive back neither physical infrastructure, nor security, nor an educated work force. Of course, the government is not able to provide such public goods in the absence of tax revenues, although the current government of President Mohamed did manage to increase the collection of taxes on the airport and seaport in Mogadishu, no small accomplishment amidst pervasive corruption and theft of foreign aid and tax revenues.

In the context of the persisting clan and political infighting, al Shabab finds a constant lease on life. It continues to adroitly insert itself into these clan rivalries and the rapacious and predatory abuse of power by official ruling entities, including land theft, and to obtain local support or at least acceptance. It tends to offer its protection to minority clans against dominant clans, and surprisingly exhibits a great deal of effectiveness in mitigating clan conflict and not appearing beholden to particular clans. In fact, when al Shabab is displaced from an area militarily, clan conflict and associated land and resource theft subsequently tends to explode, replacing a brutal order with renewed insecurity. The membership of the militant group itself, though containing significant numbers of Hawiyes, is pan-clan.

Nor is al Shabab an entity isolated from either Somalia’s people or its powerbrokers. Al Shabab members tend to go in and out of the movement and sometimes interact with their home communities. Within a family, there may well be members in al Shabab as well as in the government forcers, often in communication with each other. Crucially, both political powerbrokers and powerful businessmen often rely on al Shabab to maintain the security, exclusivity, and hegemony of their economic interests in particular areas, in exchange for paying al Shabab zakat. Many powerful economic actors, engaged in exclusionary monopolistic deals and violence against rivals, thus see little benefit from an end to fighting in Somalia.

Moreover, al Shabab is significantly better able to provide security for the movement of vehicles and individuals on the roads it controls than are other actors. Militias and police and SNA units often charge varying, multiple, and high fees, along their segments of the road; and cargo and people are still subject to ambushes, robberies, and rapes. In contrast, checkpoints manned by al Shabab charge one uniform fee, with entering vehicles receiving a receipt, and the people and cargo allowed to proceed safely.16

Al Shabab also outcompetes other actors in Somalia in its capacity to deliver justice and dispute resolution. It retains a reputation for delivering swift, effective, and, crucially, non-corrupt and fair rulings to disputes based on sharia. Thus even people from government held territories, and by some anecdotal accounts occasionally even policemen, go to al Shabab for dispute resolution.17 In contrast, the formal judiciary is perceived as overwhelmingly corrupt, dominated by certain clans, and operating on the basis of outdated 1960s statutes, thus delivering dispute outcomes based on bribes and clan standing.18 Even though efforts are under way to improve the neutrality and functionality of the formal judiciary, a long and complicated road lies ahead. Less arbitrary and corrupt formal justice procedures are of course also dependent on the functionality of police and its ability to gather evidence of crime, a precondition that rarely exists in Somalia.

Al Shabab thus takes advantage of and embraces legitimate grievances of the population, from political and clan injustice and marginalization to the corruption of the judiciary and government institutions. However, al Shabab also overreaches in its brutality and the tightness of control it imposes. Beyond brutal sharia punishment, such as stoning or cutting of limbs, hardly acceptable to most Somalis, it also overreaches in other exercises of its power.

Meanwhile, the popularity of President Mohamed took a tumble in late 2017 and 2018. Many Somalis welcomed his election in February 2017 with enthusiasm, but almost two years later, he has failed to deliver on many on his unrealistic promises, including ending the conflict with al Shabab. Instead he and the federal government have become mired in a series of paralyzing political crises that have exposed and augmented factionalism in the Somali security forces. He has also displayed an authoritarian streak, arresting and cracking down on political rivals by using their alleged financial ties to outside powers as justification. Particularly his effort to remove from office the speaker of the Somali Parliament almost resulted in a violent confrontation in the parliament in late 2017.

Neither the security situation nor the state of politics in Somalia currently give reason for optimism that the 2020 presidential elections will for the first time truly be on the basis of one-man, one-vote throughout Somalia.

The fact that several years ago, Mogadishu accepted federalism and power decentralization is perhaps the greatest recent political accomplishment. Competition over who controls Mogadishu and crucial resources has for years been a major source of conflict and corruption; and to the extent that more stable, sustainable, and accountable governance has at various times emerged, it has been on the local level. Few outside of Mogadishu, including Hawiye clans who frequently dominate business in Mogadishu, want to be ruled by Mogadishu.

However, there is as yet little agreement on what kind of federalism will be created and what the relative balance of power between the center and subnational states will be. How to generate revenues is a major challenge for both the federal and federal governments. The states do not want to give up land taxation to the federal state; but the federal state strongly dislikes the idea of having to rely only on the tax revenues from fisheries and maritime routes. And the promise of potentially huge mineral resources under the Somali sand only makes the federal versus state competition more intense. How power is devolved matters a lot. The biggest danger is that the exclusionary politics over spoils and war rents that have so long dominated Mogadishu will now become replicated at the local state level.

Amidst these long-term structural challenges, the disagreements between the federal government and federal states significantly worsened in 2018, halting formalization of the constitution and creating a myriad of other severe stabilization challenges. In September 2018, leaders of the federal states of Galmudug, Jubaland, Puntland, South West, and Hirshabelle suspended all ties with the federal government. The regional leaders accused the federal government of failing to provide security in the country and adequately combat al Shabab and fulfill its federal responsibilities toward the federal states. They demanded more autonomy and a greater share of foreign aid, lobbying foreign governments to provide them with aid directly.

Tensions between the separatist Somaliland and Mogadishu are also fiercer and more explosive than they have been in a long time. Meanwhile, Somaliland and Puntland engaged in military skirmishes in the spring of 2018 that threatened to escalate in a full-blown war.

External Actors, Regional Situation, and Donor Support

These federal government-federal state tensions have been exacerbated by the Gulf crisis that pitted Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) against Qatar, and by extension Turkey. All four countries have been intensively involved in Somalia and have been Somalia’s major donors of economic and military support and trading and investment partners. Saudi Arabia and UAE sought to force the federal government into supporting their side. When President Mohamed at first refused such pressure, declaring neutrality and refusing to sever ties with Qatar and Turkey, Saudi Arabia and UAE adopted various punitive political and economic measures. UAE also intensified its efforts to cultivate support among various Somali politicians and within federal states, often frustrating the agenda of the federal government.19 In response, federal states, often dependent on UAE funds and investment, publicly sided with UAE and Saudi Arabia. Bypassing Mogadishu, several states, including Somaliland, accelerated negotiations with the Emirati conglomerate DP World servicing Emirati strategic interests over a variety of investments, such leases of local ports. Somaliland’s finalization of a Berbera port contract with DP World prompted fury in Mogadishu, with Mogadishu seeking to stop the deal and the Somali parliament prohibiting it from going forward. In April 2018, the Somali government also confiscated millions of dollars from an Emirati airplane, alleging the money was meant for rival politicians. UAE then suspended its aid to Somalia, including the training of SNA forces, and withdrew all of its personnel from Mogadishu. However, UAE has continued cultivating the federal states, sticking to its port agreements with Somaliland regarding the Berbera port and with Puntland regarding the port in Bosaso. It is also reportedly negotiating with the Jubaland government over the development of the Kismayo port, despite objections from Mogadishu.20

But President Mohamed subsequently also complicated his relations with Turkey, refusing to castigate Saudi Arabia for the murder of Saudi dissident Jamal Kashoggi. Turkey was shocked when in October 2018 President Mohamed sided with Saudi Arabia, again threatening retaliatory measures. Yet Turkey is one of Somalia’s major donors and investors, providing direct budgetary support to the government, training Somali forces, managing the port of Mogadishu, building a variety of infrastructure projects in Somalia, and involved in many commercial deals. Unsuccessfully, Turkey also tried mediate a deal between Somaliland and Mogadishu. Yet President Mohamed sided with Saudi Arabia in its dispute with Canada.

Unrelated to the repercussions of the Gulf Crisis in Somalia, the government of Germany also ended its participation in EU’s military training mission in Somalia in early 2018. The German government cited the slow progress of the development of the SNA and its many challenges.21 However, Germany promised to retain its support to the civilian structures of Somalia. It has been one of the principal funders of the low-risk defectors’ program.

On the up side, the federal government of Somalia scored a major victory in October 2018, when the European Union for the first time in decades agreed to channel the vast majority of its 2.5-year aid package of €100 million, pledged at the Somalia Partnership Forum in Brussels in July 2019, to the Somali government’s budget. A vote of confidence that the federal government can better control pervasive corruption, this on-budget funding, formally called the State Building and Resilience Contract in Somalia, promises to strengthen the institutional capacities and delivery by the Somali federal government to the Somali population, increasing the government’s legitimacy. Such on-budget funding is also meant to improve the capacity of the federal government to transfer money to federal states, a mechanism expected to mitigate the federal-federal tensions. Whether that hope will indeed materialize, or, in the current federal crisis context, will be seen by the federal states as their defeat, remains to be seen. So does whether Somalia will have the will and capacity not to waste the financial aid through corruption. The disbursement of the funds is to be sequenced and closely monitored and tied to regular assessments against indicators and safeguard measures.22

In September 2018, the World Bank also approved its first grant to Somalia in thirty years, with US$60 million for Recurrent Cost and Reform Financing Project and US$20 million for the Domestic Revenue and Public Financial Management Capacity Strengthening Project. The World Bank also promised to collaborate with the Somali government on improving healthcare and education, and access to clean water, energy, and finance for Somali citizens under a program known as Country Partnership Framework.23 Although agriculture is seen as key for the long-term growth of the economy and job generation, it remains critically vulnerable to shocks, resulting in repeated famines. Thus the main drivers of growth in the short term remain trade, communications, and the financial and transport sectors.

Conclusion

Without more inclusive and accountable governance, violence reduction and stabilization of Somalia will not be sustainably achieved. The long-advocated remedy for Somalia’s troubles – power devolution and governance at the local level – will be eviscerated if Somali national politicians and local powerbrokers are allowed to subvert the state formation processes and continue to engage in exclusionary power grabs without accountability. But equally, authoritarian measures and selective crackdowns on clientelism will exacerbate Somalia’s political faultlines. Although donors and international actors are unable to control Somali politicians and powerbrokers, the outsiders are impotent. They have influence and should exercise it, at least against the most egregious transgressions, such as large land grabs and systematic clan marginalization that breed conflict.

Fundamentally, whether Somalia succeeds in breaking out of decades of conflict, famine, misery, corruption, and mis-governance depends on the Somali people. It depends on whether a sufficient constituency for better governance and less conflict eventually emerges or whether Somali businessmen and politicians continue to find the way to maneuver around conflict or make money from it while the Somali people barely eke out survival amidst the harshest conditions without mobilizing for change.

To reduce violent conflict and enhance stabilization, the Somali government and international actors can encourage the federal government and federal states to increase efforts to formalize the constitution and agree on an acceptable division of resources between the federal government and the federal states. Involving civil society, including women, in constitutional discussion is crucial. The international community also can help sponsor broad-based societal conversation in Somalia about justice, accountability, and reconciliation – to inform the formalization of the constitutional and other political processes. Such processes can include the development of disarmament, demobilization, justice, accountability, and reconciliation processes for Somali armed actors beyond al Shabab. More broadly, they can help Somalia move away from a militarization of Somali society toward addressing the root causes of conflict – namely, exclusion, clan discrimination, debilitating corruption, and systematic impunity.

The international community can also help foster a more cooperative regional environment, assisting in reconciliation between the federal government of Somalia and UAE.

South Africa announces $3.5 billion stimulus plan

Last Friday, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa announced that the country would be launching a $3.5 billion stimulus and recovery plan in order to revive the economy and create jobs. President Ramaphosa added that his government would also launch a $28 billion medium-term infrastructure fund. Finance Minister Nhlanhla Nene stated that half of the funds from the stimulus plans would be sourced from underperforming government programs; though no further information was provided on the specific programs. The other half will be provided by internal development finance institutions. President Ramaphosa added that the infrastructure fund would draw financing from development institutions, banks, private lenders, the private sector, and other investors. After the announcement, the rand’s value increased against the dollar. The country is in dire need for an economic boost; the unemployment rate currently stands at 27 percent and the central bank just revised its 2018 growth prediction downward to 0.7 percent.

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In countries where jihadi groups have gained control over territory and populations, states face the challenge of dealing with individuals accused of association with those groups. Governments have too often responded in heavy-handed ways, penalizing broad segments of local populations suspected of having supported the group, often on the basis of thin or non-existent evidence. Such excessively punitive and dragnet approaches risk backfiring by exacerbating local grievances, conflating victims with perpetrators, and laying the groundwork for future violence.

On October 5, the Foreign Policy program at Brookings and the United Nations University’s Centre for Policy Research (UNU-CPR) presented a discussion of alternative strategies and justice issues for countries affected by jihadi violence. Experts presented the findings of three fieldwork-based case studies of Nigeria, Somalia, and Iraq, which analyze these states’ approaches to accountability and rehabilitation of Boko Haram, al-Shabab, and Islamic State affiliates. Panelists also discussed the potential application of transitional justice tools; conditional amnesties; defectors programs; and disarmament, demobilization, and rehabilitation approaches to transitions away from conflict in such settings.

Panelists included Lana Baydas, an independent human rights expert; Vanda Felbab-Brown, senior fellow with the Center for 21st Century Security and Intelligence at Brookings; and Cale Salih, research officer at UNU-CPR. Landry Signé, a David M. Rubenstein Fellow in the Africa Growth Initiative at Brookings, provided introductory remarks and moderated the discussion. After the program, panelists took questions from the audience.

Introduction

The poster case of state failure, Somalia has been battered by undulating phases of a civil war playing out among the country’s many fractious clans, larger entities aspiring to statehood, warlords, and Islamist groups since 1991. Somalia has experienced multiple iterations of jihadist groups gaining control over large territories amidst state collapse, as well as extensive international efforts to stabilise and build state institutions. The country is thus an illuminating case-study of how militants administer territories and deliver governance, and how antiinsurgency and stabilisation efforts react to the militants’ rule and populations who lived under it. It is also a rich laboratory for examining both state-led punitive policies toward jihadist militants and populations associated with them, and for non-punitive approaches. This report focuses on military, punitive, and non-punitive approaches to the potent jihadist militant group Harakat al-Shabaab al-Mujahideen, commonly referred to as al Shabaab.

The government of Somalia and the international community have principally relied on defeating al Shabaab militarily and there are no immediate prospects for negotiations with the group. However, the Somali government has also repeatedly, in an ad hoc manner and without any policy specification or clear legal consequence, declared temporary amnesties for al Shabaab defectors. Similarly, it has struck ad hoc political deals with splinter groups and, with international support, maintains a disarmament, demobilisation, and reintegration (DDR)-like program for low-level al Shabaab defectors. The government has not yet undertaken any similar DDR-like efforts toward the myriad of clan and warlord militias that exist in Somalia. Efforts at reintegration of former combatants from al Shabaab and beyond, and at clan and community reconciliation, also take place through non-governmental programs and traditional justice mechanisms.

Two sets of Somali government-led non-punitive processes have been undertaken: 1) ad hoc political deals with so-called high-value defectors, who, in exchange for defecting along with their followers, receive protection and red-carpet treatment from the Somali government and face no accountability or scrutiny for their past behaviour; and 2) DDR-like rehabilitation programs for al Shabaab defectors who, according to Somali intelligence officials’ assessments pose a low-risk of returning to violent terrorism, proselytising or providing logistical support for al Shabaab. Defectors who are assessed as high-risk as well as high-risk detainees are sent to military courts, which are widely perceived not to adhere to international human rights standards, and often issued the death penalty.

The reception and screening phases of detention and defection processes are non-transparent. Civilians who lived under al Shabaab rule and were forced to work for the group in performing non-violent tasks, such as cooking and washing or paying, risk getting caught up in the screening process, and judged as low-risk defectors at best. Despite the development of draft standard operating procedures for screening, the risk of arbitrariness in determining who is low-risk and who is high-risk persists. Thus, even civilians who were only tangentially associated with al Shabaab risk being deemed high-risk and then facing the death penalty. Yet Somalis, particularly those who experienced al Shabaab’s terrorist attacks, often applaud such extremely punitive measures.

The government-led effort that has received the most support from the international community is the program for low-risk defectors. It has registered the greatest improvements and progress in its operations over time, for example in terms of separating children from adults and improving exit procedures. But major challenges persist, including the role and presence of Somali intelligence services at the rehabilitation facilities; little harmonisation across the centres; lack of any rehabilitation facilities for female defectors, detainees, and women who lived under al Shabaab rule and then came to be perceived as al Shabaab associates; the underdevelopment of reinsertion and rehabilitation programming for receiving communities and the communities’ reconciliation with former al Shabaab associates and among rival, subordinate and dominant clans; and the lack of job opportunities for former al Shabaab combatants and associates amidst overall extensive unemployment.

Beyond the challenges of the low-risk defector programs, several large problems loom over the amnesty declarations and government-led programs: the lack of a legal framework and the absence of certainty for potential defectors regarding what fate they can expect if they risk their lives to escape from al Shabaab; high corruption and lack of adherence to international human rights laws by Somali government institutions; the lack of a parallel effort to disarm and transform clan and warlord militias; persisting clan conflict and discrimination; and the country’s prevalent politics of exclusion and marginalisation. These problems also permeate traditional justice mechanisms that are informally used to reintegrate al Shabaab defectors. In addition, their biased treatment of women and discrimination against minority clans perpetuates grievances. Yet efforts at trauma healing, forgiveness, and reconciliation among former combatants, local communities, and clans have been led by Somali non-governmental organisations (NGOs) for several years.

This report explores the balance and tensions between the need for forgiveness and healing and the desire for accountability and justice. While al Shabaab often provides the order that some communities prefer over chaos, clan discrimination, or rule of pro-government warlords, there is also significant resentment among Somali communities against al Shabaab brutality and crimes. Perceptions that high-value al Shabaab defectors receive a red-carpet treatment from the Somali government and that low-level defectors receive support such as literary, numeracy, and vocational training, in addition to religious de-radicalisation, augment the resentments. There is also a deep belief among many Somali civil society representatives that the root cause of Somalia’s multifaceted problems is the profound and pervasive impunity of the powerful. They fear that non-punitive approaches, such as the high-value and even the low-risk defectors programs, only exacerbate this sense of impunity.

Clearly, non-punitive approaches directed at former low-risk al Shabaab combatants, clans aligned with al Shabaab because of prior discrimination, and populations who lived under al Shabaab rule, are badly needed. They are needed in order to prevent new injustices, achieve sustainable peace, and avoid endless cycles of violence, discrimination and counter-revenge. However, emphasising accountability, including in creative ways beyond imprisonment, as an essential part of non-punitive approaches, as well as in just punitive approaches is equally essential for a comprehensive peace.

This report proceeds as follows: The Context Section discusses the Somali military, political context, developments in recent years, the quality of governance by formal state institutions and al Shabaab, and societal attitudes toward those associated with the group. The next section reviews the design and programmatic content of current approaches to leniency, amnesty, and accountability – of government-led processes, traditional justice mechanisms, and informal reconciliation processes led by Somali NGOs. It describes the existing policy framework, the lack of an adequate legal framework, and the role of the amnesty and defectors program in the government’s overall strategy toward al Shabaab. It then details the leniency policies toward high-value, high-risk, and low-risk defectors and evaluates their accomplishments and challenges, such as regarding women. Finally, the section details and assesses traditional justice and clan reconciliation mechanisms, such as xeer, as well as Somali NGO-led reconciliation processes.

The following section provides an overall assessment of current approaches in Somalia to amnesty, defectors programs, and high-value defector co-optation deals. It highlights, inter alia: the lack of transparency and consistency regarding the reception of defectors and the high-value co-optation deals, as well as screening challenges; the lack of legal certainty for defectors; and reintegration challenges. The section also emphasises the need to integrate into programmatic treatment for low-risk defectors the motivations of those who join al Shabaab or become associated with it, while recognising the role of grievances, exclusion, social and economic marginalisation, and corruption. It also raises the issue of foreign fighters among al Shabaab, a topic currently off the radar screen of existing government processes. The report concludes by offering a detailed set of policy recommendations.

In addition to reviewing existing background literature and reports on Somalia’s amnesties, defectors programs, DDR-like efforts, traditional and transitional justice approaches, and security and political developments, this report is based on my field trip to Mogadishu, Somalia and Nairobi, Kenya in December 2017. I had previously conducted similar research on DDR-like processes in Somalia in March 2015, at the time visiting the facilities for defectors in Baidoa and Kismayo. During this December 2017 fieldwork, I interviewed 36 interlocutors, including officials from various branches of the UN Mission Assistance Mission to Somalia (UNSOM), United Nations Political Office for Somalia (UNPOS), officers of the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) and their international support partners, officials of the UK Embassy in Somalia, Somali government and intelligence officials and military officers, international DDR contractors, Somali DDR contractors, representatives of Somali NGOs and international NGOs operating in Mogadishu, representatives of the Somali business community, and Somali journalists and researchers.

This material has been funded by U.K. aid from the U.K. government; however the views expressed do not necessarily reflect the U.K. government’s official policies.

Despite important progress through years of international assistance around counterterrorism, counterinsurgency, humanitarian efforts, and state-building, peace and stability remain elusive in Somalia. On April 6, the Africa Security Initiative in the Foreign Policy program at Brookings hosted a discussion with experts on the challenges Somalia faces now and potential paths forward.

Brookings Senior Fellow Michael O’Hanlon remarked that Somalia “has essentially been in one degree or another of chaos and civil war” ever since former President Siad Barre was deposed in 1991. Amidst ongoing conflict, he pointed to areas of hope today: There is stability in Puntland and Somaliland; the federal government in Mogadishu was formed peacefully and through at least quasi-democratic means; and there has been progress in security and socio-economic matters since the height of al-Shabab’s rule almost a decade ago.

Stephen Schwartz—appointed in 2016 as the first U.S. ambassador to Somalia since 1991—described the challenges he saw when he arrived in mid-2016: rampant corruption, a lack of social trust, persistent insecurity, inadequate government revenue and capacity, and limited government presence in much of the country. And he pointed to progress, including presidential elections and the peaceful transition of power from former president Hassan Sheikh Mohamud to the current president Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed. While the vote “was not comprehensive and universal,” Ambassador Schwartz explained, “people from every part of the country were able to vote for parliament in some numbers.” The new parliamentarians organized a free and fair vote for president and conducted it well and transparently, according to Schwartz, ultimately choosing a very strong candidate. The new government enjoyed a high level of legitimacy and inspired hope. “The Somalia of today is vastly better and more hopeful than the one of 10 years ago or 20 years ago,” Schwartz concluded.

Vanda Felbab-Brown, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, spoke of her December 2017 fieldwork in Somalia in preparation for a United Nations University report on amnesty, leniency, and defectors’ program in Somalia (forthcoming in May). She explained: “Al-Shabab is only one of at least 60 warring actors in Somalia, and so Somalia will not achieve peace unless it starts doing a much deeper reckoning with the multiplicity of armed actors there.”

Although al-Shabab is estimated to number only between 2,000 and 3,000 active fighters, it controls vast segments of Somalia and is present throughout, including in Mogadishu where it regularly conducts attacks as well as collects taxes. While clan rivalries have divided other groups, al-Shabab manages to raise above clan politics. Al-Shabab also frequently outperforms the federal government, states, and powerbrokers in delivering better security, such as long roads, and reliable and not corrupt—if sometimes brutal—justice, particularly in resolving property disputes.

Although the African Union Mission to Somalia (AMISOM) formally has about 22,000 forces in Somalia, Felbab-Brown explained that it’s not clear how troops are actually deployed. She also pointed to AMISOM’s inability to hold territories nominally cleared of al-Shabab and its minimal interaction with local populations. Similarly, the Somali National Army (SNA) remains critically weak, Felbab-Brown explained, even though the international community funds it with some $240 million per year. Among 29,000 SNA troops, she added, “maybe there are some 12,000 SNA soldiers that have a weapon, that have some ammunition, and that have some level of capacity to perform on the battlefield.” But even that force remains debilitated by corruption and clan-based rifts, with physical infighting among the clan and commander factions within the SNA not unusual.

Landry Signé is a David M. Rubenstein Fellow in the Global Economy and Development Program and Africa Growth Initiative at Brookings. Agreeing that there are signs of hope in Somalia, he also presented a number of troubling indicators: Freedom House gives Somalia the worst possible score on civil and political rights, for instance. In this area, “we are still very far from a strong improvement, and the score has not changed since 1999,” said Signé. On other measures, like state fragility, Somalia ranks among the worst as well.

Prof. Signé emphasized that Somalia’s challenges are often intertwined. Much comes down to “the limited ability of the state to provide basic public services, and goods to the citizens, including security, health, education, and even territorial integrity,” he concluded. As such, solutions “can only be at the nexus between security, state capacity, domestic resource mobilization, and accountability.”

Signé further elaborated on five critical solutions for Somalia:

Security reforms: Somalia ranks seventh in the world in terms of highest impact of terrorism, so security reforms are vital for protecting citizens and ensuring territorial integrity.

State capacity and effectiveness: Building an effective and non-corrupt state, with strong rule of law and an effective public administration that successfully delivers basic public goods and services is critical for nation-building.

Economic reforms: Young people represent more than 70 percent of Somalia’s population, and the unemployment rate is as high as 67 percent. So economic reforms, especially those aimed at creating jobs for young people, are key to avoid vulnerability to violent extremism, especially where over 50 percent of the population lives below poverty line. More economic freedom, increased agricultural productivity, diversification, industrialization, and better deterrents to and management of shocks (which create food insecurity and poverty) are key.

Accountability: Since Somalia is heterogeneous and fractured along ethnic, clan, and cultural lines, an inclusive and accountable government is vital for peace. Accountability has five dimensions: personal accountability by leaders; peer accountability; vertical accountability embodied in free and fair elections; horizontal accountability through strong and independent institutions providing checks and balances; and diagonal accountability through a vibrant civil society.

In closing, Ambassador Schwartz proposed several low-cost ways for Washington to aid stability in Somalia, including—crucially—providing budget support to the financially struggling Somali federal government. An investment of about $100 million annually for up to five years would immediately kick start the federal government’s ability to operate and pay salaries, begin revenue-sharing with federal member states, and build institutions to provide security and services to the population. The financial assistance would accompany a robust public financial management program, with appropriate accountability controls, and would foster national unity by building an important linkage between the federal government and the member state governments.

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Despite important progress through years of international counterterrorism, counterinsurgency, and state-building assistance, peace and sustainable stabilization remain elusive in Somalia. Al-Shabab remains entrenched throughout vast parts of Somalia and regularly conducts deadly terrorist attacks even in Mogadishu. Capacities of Somali national security remain weak, and while the Trump administration has significantly augmented U.S. anti-Shabab air strikes in Somalia that approach has limits. Meanwhile, Somali political processes and public institutions remain corrupt and in the pockets of powerful clans. These pernicious governance processes give continual lease on life to al-Shabab and other destabilizing armed actors. Improving governance and state-building—and subjecting Somalia’s governments and powerbrokers to accountability—are fundamental for conflict reduction and eventual stabilization.

On April 6, the Africa Security Initiative in the Foreign Policy program at Brookings hosted a discussion on Somalia. Ambassador Stephen Schwartz discussed the internal and external challenges to restoration. Dr. Felbab-Brown and Dr. Signé joined with their comments on security, governance, and economic challenges in Somalia. Brookings Senior Fellow Michael O’Hanlon moderated the discussion.

The end-of-2017 U.S. decision to suspend military aid to the Somali national army until the federal government can demonstrate better accountability and performance of its forces is appropriate.

However, as I saw during my December research in Somalia, even combined with the significant increase in U.S. air strikes against the jihadi group Al Shabab, the U.S. policy is inadequate.

To mitigate terrorism threats and foster stability in the country, the United States must do what the Trump administration explicitly disavows: Focus on internal governance and state-building and insist on far broader accountability of Somalia’s federal and state governments and powerbrokers toward their citizens. Otherwise, the brutal Shabab or its mutation will remain entrenched.

In 2016, Somalia received about $250 million from the international community for its security sector, following years of similar contributions. Yet, its army is not able to engage even in joint patrolling with the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) forces, let alone hold territories nominally cleared of al Shabab.

The Somali National Army (SNA) rosters have some 29,000 individuals on its payroll, of which some 12,000 may actually be soldiers with some capacity to fight. The rest are ghost soldiers, widows and the elderly. Despite the massive international aid, the military’s training remains inadequate, and equipment is siphoned off to clans and al Shabab.

Because of theft and corruption, soldiers’ salaries are not paid regularly, though Somalia’s current president Mohamad Abdullaji “Farmajo” Mohamad managed to cut the salary arrears from six months to two. As with many aspects of Somalia’s social and political life, the soldiers’ primary loyalties are not to the state, but to fractious clans.

Somali national security forces do not take the fight to al Shabab; but neither, any longer, does the supposedly 22,000-strong AMISOM. For some two years, it has remained in static positions, often locked-in garrisons.

It too struggles with effectively holding territory, with various clan and warlord militias and semi-official police forces most frequently performing that function. Often they extort local populations, engage in retaliation against rival and minority clans or steal land and other economic resources.

Still, when AMISOM withdraws from territories, as happened in 2017 and with further “conditions-based” withdrawals slated by 2020, security tends to deteriorate significantly and al Shabab fills the void. Its return exacerbates insecurity as the group punishes collaborators with AMISOM and the government.

Although much weaker than in 2012, al Shabab still controls significant territory and regularly conducts attacks in much of the country, including in Mogadishu. The intensified U.S. air strikes on al Shabab’s massing forces and vehicles significantly complicate its operations.

But they mostly disperse the militants, including to Mogadishu, with the same security vacuum left behind. Reliance on flipped and washed-out Shabab commanders, such as Ahmed Madobe in Kismayo and recently Mukhtar Robow and their militias, may bring immediate tactical gains. But if the politics and governance this unleashes remains predatory, discriminatory and capricious, the gains are ephemeral.

Although only numbering between 2,000 and 3,000 fighters, and despite its brutal and unpopular backward version of Islam, al Shabab remains deeply entrenched. Systematically, it outperforms the national government and local powerbrokers in the provision of order and brutal, although not corrupt, justice.

Meanwhile, official Somali political processes and public institutions remain in the pockets of powerful clans, which discriminate against their rivals and advance narrow parochial interests. They are also pervaded by corruption and usurpation of public resources for private gain.

Thus, even Mogadishu residents often prefer to approach al Shabab for the resolution of land and other disputes: Its decisions are widely seen as swift and not corrupt. Using al Shabab-controlled roads is predictable and safe at least for those who don’t collaborate with the government. Buses, taxis and trucks are charged a flat fee upon arriving at a Shabab checkpoint and given a receipt. Their cargo is safe.

Roads controlled by Somali national forces or militias feature many unpredictable fees and robberies are frequent. Thus Somali businessmen, including those based in Mogadishu, often hire al Shabab for security provision for their businesses.

Al Shabab also adroitly exploits widespread clan discrimination, aligning itself with weaker clans and providing them with protection and resource access. Its domestically-oriented recruitment propaganda emphasizes very specific local grievances and cases of power abuse and resource theft, not ideology.

For the United States to robustly weaken al Shabab, it must induce the Somali government to be accountable to the citizens, to deliver public services and to minimize clan discrimination and the exclusion of minority clans.

Priority must be given to reducing corruption in the justice system and in public and commercial contracts and to expanding access to resources for less powerful clans and individuals.

At the end of the day, al Shabab will need to be integrated into Somali society through accountability and reconciliation processes to which the various clan militias and flipped powerbrokers will also need to be subjected.

In this essay, published in the Fall 2017 issue of Dædalus: “Civil Wars & Global Disorder: Threats & Opportunities,” Vanda Felbab-Brown analyzes the multiple threats that organized crime and illicit economies pose to states and the international order, with a particular focus on the security dimensions of the crime-conflict nexus. In discussing the range of responses by states and the international community to the nexus of criminal economies and civil wars, insurgencies, and terrorism, Dr. Felbab-Brown highlights how premature and ill-conceived government efforts to combat illicit economies have counterproductive effects, hampering efforts to suppress militancy and, in some cases, generating dangerous international spillovers of criminality.

This essay problematizes and revises the conventional wisdom regarding the relationships between conflicts and illicit economies and provides empirical evidence from Latin America, South and Southeast Asia, and Eastern Af­rica. It shows that what is internationally illegal may be seen as highly legitimate by local populations, and that the sponsors of the illegal can become potent power brokers and political actors. In analyzing the mul­tiple threats that illegal economies and or­ganized crime pose to the state and to in­ternational order, this essay also highlights that negative externalities and undesirable spillover effects can also be caused by gov­ernment policies, not just the illicit markets and civil wars. Paradoxically, internal stabil­ity and even international order are not nec­essarily weakened by a state hosting an illic­it economy; sometimes stability and order can be strengthened by the illicit economy.

The essay then examines various pathways out of the conflict-crime nexus, including defeating militants without suppressing illicit economies (as in the Peruvian military’s successful effort in defeating Shining Path); suppressing crime and illicit economies without ending conflict (as with international anti-piracy efforts in the Gulf of Aden and off Somalia); and state co-optation of illicit economies (a strategy central to the Burmese government’s ability to suppress military conflict). The essay concludes with policy recommendations, including correctly sequencing anti-crime and conflict mitigation efforts; recognizing the political dimensions of crime and illicit economies; reducing corruption; and improving governance. In concluding, Dr. Felbab-Brown maintains:

“How illicit economies are handled even outside of conflict settings will critically shape the viability of some states and the systems of rule. Thus, a failure to incorporate a sophisticated political analysis of illicit economies into decision-making will undermine the effectiveness of counterinsurgency, counterterrorism, and state-building efforts, and even international relations.”

On June 8, the Somalian terrorist group al-Shabab overran a military base in Puntland’s town of Af Urur, killing between 38 and 61 soldiers (with the government of Puntland reporting the lower number and al-Shabab the higher, as is often the case) and injuring others. The assault came days after the government of Puntland, in Somalia’s northeast, sentenced members of al-Shabab to death. The militants had been captured on April 26 as they tried to carry out a large bomb attack in Bosaso, Puntland’s key commercial hub and a crucial port in the region.

Over the last two years, several kinds of conflicts have been brewing and intensifying in Puntland, allowing the al-Qaida-aligned al-Shabab and its rival splinter Islamic State in Somalia (ISS) faction to mount increasingly prominent operations. In the wake of the Af Urur attack, Puntland’s government has called on both the international community and the federal government in Mogadishu to help rid the region of jihadists.

The attack reveals far less about al-Shabab’s persisting strength than about the cauldron of problems stirring in Puntland, a semiautonomous region of Somalia now on its way to formal statehood under the country’s emerging federalism, but still very much defining its power vis­à­vis Mogadishu. In addition to the jihadist threats, Puntland is again facing a return of piracy, and its clan rivalries have intensified. It also has to deal with a wide­ranging assortment of armed actors, such as antipiracy militias and clan militias, both of which are deeply and explosively linked to clan politics and whose loyalties vary. And, as in other parts of Somalia, Puntland has been badly hit by a severe drought, bringing the region to the edge of famine.

MILITANCY ON THE RISE

Even as members of the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM)—in the country since 2009 to suppress al-Shabab and train and build Somali national security forces—talk of pulling out before the mission is set to formally end in 2020, al-Shabab is far from defeated. Some of the talk of withdrawal by AMISOM members may simply be an attempt to obtain higher payments from the United States and western European states, which are bankrolling the African Union’s military effort in the country. But the withdrawals that have already taken place, most importantly by Ethiopian troops from Somalia’s Gedo region, reveal large security vulnerabilities. Neither Somali forces nor local militias were able to fill the void the withdrawal created, and al-Shabab rapidly took over the vacated areas.

In other parts of southern and central Somalia, including in the capital, Mogadishu, al-Shabab bomb attacks go off every few days. The frequency of these attacks—on police and military stations, governmental compounds, politicians’ convoys, and ordinary Somalis’ lands and livelihoods—has increased over the past year. Rarely is al-Shabab able to hold towns for long, but it controls many a road in Somalia and often rules the nights, even in large towns such as Baidoa and Beledweyne.

Making matters worse, the federal government in Mogadishu has no national forces to spare for Puntland. Its 11,000 poorly trained, paid, and equipped troops are badly overstretched in central and southern Somalia. And despite Puntland’s exhortations in the wake of the Af Urur attack, it is not clear that its government would really want a federal security force in the state because of its potential to interfere in local elections and influence regional politics on Mogadishu’s behalf.

A JIHADIST-­PIRATE ALLIANCE?

Al-Shabab first established a presence in Puntland several years ago, after AMISOM operations pushed it from central Somalia into the region’s Galgala hills, some 60 miles south of Bosaso. Although it was on the run at the time, the jihadist group has remained entrenched there ever since, and it regularly mounts attacks from the hills. U.S. air strikes have failed to dislodge the group.

Neither has the Puntland Maritime Police Force (PMPF), a coast guard militia, been able to root out al-Shabab. Originally designed to fight Puntland’s pirates, the force has received secret funding from the United Arab Emirates and training involving mercenaries linked to South Africa’s apartheid-era government and companies connected to Erik Prince, the owner of the private security firm formerly known as Blackwater. After piracy dropped off in 2012 as a result of intense international naval patrolling and better protection measures on ships, however, the PMPF reinvented itself as an all­purpose force for former Puntland President Abdirahman Farole. The force soon became entangled in a web of explosive patronage alignments, used by political factions associated with Farole ostensibly for protection and allegedly for intimidation of political and clan rivals. It also sought to curry favor with the United States by offering itself as a force ready to counter al-Shabab. With U.S. sponsorship, it mounted several raids into the Galgala hills in 2013 but ultimately failed to drive the jihadists out.

Counterproductively, these failed raids also pushed the terrorist group into a temporary alliance with Puntland pirates. That alliance withered as the pirates’ attacks stopped paying off, but recent developments suggest it could soon revive. With the slacking of ships’ security measures and the increase in the industrial illegal fishing in Somalia’s waters that Somali pirates have traditionally cited to justify their own crimes, the famine­inducing drought afflicting Somalia may yet revive the dormant pirates. Should that happen, al-Shabab in Puntland may once again reach out to the pirates to coordinate against their shared PMPF enemy.

For now, however, al-Shabab in general and its Puntland presence in particular are far more preoccupied with its splinter group that declared allegiance to the Islamic State and would like to induce other members to follow. Al-Shabab’s internal security wing has been diligently trying to eliminate any ISS sympathizers, purging leaders that show pro­ISS inclinations.

They have good reason to be worried. In October 2016, 50 ISS fighters seized the port of Qandala on a mountainous coastal strip in the Gulf of Aden. The town is sparsely populated, but it provides the splinter group with access to the gulf and smuggling routes to Yemen, where other ISIS factions operate. That takeover may also put the Somali ISIS in contact with reawakening pirates. What kind of triangular relationship would develop between the pirates and the two jihadist groups under such circumstances and whether it would be violent and conflictual or mainly a tactical cooperation of convenience is still up in the humid, salty coastal air of Somalia.

CLAN RIVALRIES AND FAMINE

In their struggle for dominance, both al-Shabab and ISS have drawn on the tensions and rivalries among Somalia’s clans. Qandala, for example, is the home of ISIS leader Sheikh Abdulqadir Mumin. It also features a clan­based armed group led by the former governor of the Bari region, Abdisamad Mohamed Galan. Although not aligned with ISS or al-Shabab, he has been a fierce critic of Puntland’s government and his militia operates largely independently, sometimes at cross-purposes with or even directly against the government. His semi-rebellious presence and anti-government agitation alienate local clans from the government and distract the Puntland government from going after ISS.

Clan rivalries and regional contestations have also ensnared Puntland’s interim government. In 2015, Somalia’s power devolution and state formation got under way in order to address the historic tensions between Mogadishu and Somalia’s regions, including separatist and semiautonomous regions such as Puntland. The center and the regions have thought over the distribution of power and resources for decades, with Mogadishu’s desire to control often provoking both political infighting and even violent conflict. At that time, large­scale conflict broke out among rival clans in the town of Galkayo, historically divided between Puntland and what has become the state of Galmudug. In October 2016, heavy fighting resumed again. The United Arab Emirates, with its extensive if opaque influence in Puntland and Somalia more broadly, tried and failed to broker a peace. Sponsored by Somalia’s federal government, the African Union, the European Union, and the U.N., a cease­fire agreement was signed in November 2016, but tensions remain high and could explode anew. There are also rebellious clans on Puntland’s border with Somaliland. These tensions, along with Galan’s semi-mutinous desire for autonomy, have been preoccupying the Puntland government, reducing its capacity and willingness to focus on al-Shabab and ISS.

In the short term, maintaining security is also crucial for dealing with the region’s terrible drought and food insecurity, which have brought it to the edge of famine. Debilitating southern and central Somalia, the drought has also killed vast numbers of livestock in Puntland, often wiping out more than 90 percent of the livelihoods of Puntland’s pastoralists. In Somalia overall, nearly 6.2 million people—more than half of the population—have been experiencing acute water and food shortages, and almost three million are starving. Some spring rain provided temporary relief, but the crisis is not over—and the international aid community is trying to deal with similar conditions in the Lake Chad region, South Sudan, and Yemen.

Puntland must develop the wherewithal to address the local grievances and build inclusive, equitable, and accountable local governance, or its problems are only likely to grow. It should, for example, be scrupulous in allowing Puntland’s various clans to have equitable access to political power and economic resources. The Puntland government should also endeavor to engage Puntland’s civil society, a robust actor with on­the­ground reach. Civil society groups not only can channel grievances and priorities of local populations but also can actually implement projects. And it must diligently start developing credible security operations against al-Shabab and ISS, rather than ignoring them in order to battle rival states or rival militias.

Failing to do so would besmirch Puntland’s reputation as a bastion of stability within a troubled country. More important, it could jeopardize hundreds of thousands of lives. Now is the time for the regional government to prove that it will not allow insecurity to undermine international relief efforts.